


hold me tight within your clutch

by tosca1390



Category: Psy-Changeling - Nalini Singh
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Regency
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-30
Updated: 2014-06-30
Packaged: 2018-02-06 21:54:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1873869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tosca1390/pseuds/tosca1390
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Sascha Duncan, the only child and heiress to the Duncan merchant fortune, first meets His Grace Lucas Hunter, Duke of Ormonde, at a ball.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	hold me tight within your clutch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spyglass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spyglass/gifts), [magisterequitum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterequitum/gifts), [empressearwig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/empressearwig/gifts), [torigates](https://archiveofourown.org/users/torigates/gifts), [Sonni89](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sonni89/gifts), [theepiccek](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theepiccek/gifts), [hariboo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hariboo/gifts), [katayla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/katayla/gifts).



> So, I started this back in August for Grace's birthday. I thought, how large could this get?
> 
> Well, here we are, eleven months later. 
> 
> So, this is for my wonderful Grace, who deserves all the nice things. I'll try to make sure the next birthday gift is more timely.
> 
> Also, for everyone else who heard me wail about this for eleven months. SORRY.

*

Sascha Duncan, the only child and heiress to the Duncan merchant fortune, first meets His Grace Lucas Hunter, Duke of Ormonde, at a ball. 

The Devonshires, with their large great hall and vast expanse of a townhouse, host the highlight of the season every year. This year, Sascha’s mother has finally wrangled a much-sought-after invitation for herself, her comptroller, and her only daughter. This is the first clear sign of the Duncans’ upward momentum, past the middle-class mercantile baseness and into the upper echelons of society. 

“It helps that the Duchess owes you a substantial loan,” Santano, her mother’s comptroller, says coolly from his seat opposite in the carriage. 

Sascha doesn’t reply even as her mother nods, her face even. Her interest has never lain in the mechanics of their business and fortune; Sascha has always been a sensitive girl, now a sensitive woman. She hides it for the sake of her mother, to appear as cool and collected as Nikita Duncan. There are no emotions in business, none of Rousseau’s leanings in the Duncan family; there is only power, and strength begets strength. 

“You will take care to engage with the Duke of Ormonde,” Nikita says as they travel through crowded streets. The spring skies over London are deep-blue with night, torches flickering against the starlight. 

“For what purpose?” Sascha asks, laying her hands flat on the blue and green-sprigged silk gown, new this season. The blue is as pale as a country spring sky, an excellent backdrop for swirls of green is as deep as the emerald pendant at her neck, the cool silver sitting against the bared skin of her breastbone. Her mother had placed special care in Sascha’s preparation this afternoon; for what reason, she is uncertain. 

“Because we said so,” Santano murmurs, his eyes fluttering over Sascha. A dark shock of grey-peppered hair falls across his brow. 

Frowning slightly, Sascha glances at her mother. Nikita eyes her evenly, a stunning picture in deep black silk, white lace accents at her throat and wrists. 

“What is important is that he sees you,” Nikita says in measured tones. “Can you handle that?”

Even at twenty-one, her mother can still make her feel like a babe-in-arms. “Certainly, Mother,” Sascha says before she looks back out the window, to the streets passing by. The air is cool against her warm skin. 

By the time they arrive, the ball in is full swing. Devonshire House is awash in light and sound; Sascha cannot help but let the excitement swell within her. She has always longed to see the inside, and this is her chance. Inside, as Nikita and Santano linger near the receiving line to speak with the Duke and Duchess, Sascha moves inward, clasping her hands in front of her. The crowd is like a kaleidoscope of color and bodies, the headdresses perching high atop the heads of the most elegant of ladies. Sascha does not let her usual self-consciousness overwhelm her; her mother is out of sight and here, Sascha can satisfy her curiosity to her hearts’ content. She eschews the wide light-saturated dance hall for the sparsely-populated corridors of the first floor, her eyes fixing on the portraits and landscapes. 

She halts in front of a particularly engaging landscape of the countryside around Althorp House, the seat of the Duchess’s brother, Earl Spencer. There is little art of substance and beauty in her mother’s home; she soaks up the colors as she perches on her tiptoes to peer closer, the sounds of the ball just a soft murmur in the distance. 

“You are quite entranced, madam.”

Sascha turns and catches the emerald-green gaze of the Duke of Ormonde as he lingers behind her. A strange flush rises to her skin, warming her cheeks. 

“I did not mean to disturb,” he says easily, his smile white and nearly feline against the olive of his skin. 

The sound of his voice sends shivers through her. She wets her lips nervously and drops into a brief curtsey. “You do not, Your Grace,” she says, keeping his gaze. He is darkly handsome, tall, overwhelming even in the wide corridors of Devonshire House; but she knows her own strength. 

His smile widens. The green of his cravat echoes his eyes, echoes her gown and the emerald at her throat; they are well-matched, she thinks absently. “I do like this painting,” he says, coming to stand next to her. His shoulder brushes hers, smooth linen against her bare arm. 

“I have seen very little like it before,” she says at last. Her education – her sanctioned education – has been in the art of manipulation and business. But for the secret cache of literature and history tomes in the lowest drawer of her vanity, she would be just as her mother, meant to empower the Duncan name. 

Sascha has always been too curious for her own good, however. 

“That is a shame,” he murmurs, gaze raking over her. Her breath hitches in her chest, the boning of her gown suddenly tight at her ribs. For a wild moment, she wants to turn and run, to keep him from whatever plans her mother and Santano have for him. “Miss –“

“Duncan,” she says, biting the inside of her cheek. “Sascha Duncan, Your Grace.”

It is not the proper introduction it should have been. She is certain his gaze will glaze over, his clear interest fade. Her blood is mostly mercantile, her mother the only one of her kind – a merciless woman of business. There is poison in her name, and Sascha wants to tell him to run. 

Then, a gloved hand comes to the line of her collarbones, touching the silver chain of her pendant. Every nerve at her skin seems to come alive at his touch; it is warm even through the satin of his gloves. 

“The emerald suits you,” he says after a moment, voice low. She thinks he can feel her heartbeat through the thin skin of her neck. 

“My mother thought it too simple for the evening,” she says, voice steady. She, in a rare moment of solidity against her mother, had insisted on it. 

His fingers slide along the curve of her throat as he bows his head nearer to hers. “No. It is just enough. Any more would overwhelm your natural beauty.”

Blushing, she keeps his gaze even as the breath leaves her in a slow shaky exhale. “Thank you for the kindness, Your Grace,” she says softly. 

Fingers lingering just a moment more, he smiles and drops his hand away. “I will leave you to your observations. But would you be so kind as to save me a dance, Miss Duncan?”

She tips her head back and smiles slightly. “With pleasure.”

He takes her hand in his and kisses her gloved knuckles. She feels the heat of his mouth through the thin fabric. His gaze seems to pierce right through her, sharp and too bright in the candle-lit corridor. Then, he walks away towards the main hall, a tall shadow of angles and lines. When he disappears she leans against the cool wall and shuts her eyes, her chest tight. 

When at last she rejoins her mother, Nikita looks at her too sharply. 

“You were gone quite a while.”

Sascha opens her mouth to retort, to explain the first contact made with the Duke; but she merely mumbles an apology and lingers near her mother’s elbow. She wants to keep those moments for herself alone, deep in the secret corners of her heart. When the Duke comes to collect her for their dance, she can sense her mother’s amazement, Santano’s too-interested pleasure. The hall is awash with murmurs and twitters, but in the circle of his arms, Sascha hears nothing but her own heartbeat, echoing his. 

“I would like to call on you, Miss Duncan,” he says as she readies to depart at the end of the evening, the skies dark with the midnight hour. Her mother and Santano are deep in conversation with the Duke of Dorset, out of the range of hearing. 

Sascha allows him to settle the cloak around her shoulders, looking up into his dark green eyes. “My mother – “

“I’d like to see you alone, if you would,” he interjects, voice low. 

A strange ache settles in her belly, curling low. She glances back at her mother, who takes no notice of her. “Yes,” Sascha finds herself saying, despite the impropriety. “I am usually quite alone in the mid-mornings and early afternoons.”

The Duke smiles, as if she has pleased him somehow. His fingers linger at the nape of her neck before he steps away. “I will send a note, prior to arrival.”

“I look forward to it,” she says, looking up at him with a slight smile. 

During the carriage ride home, Nikita fixes a serious cold gaze on Sascha as Santano dozes. He drinks to excess sometimes, Sascha thinks with contempt, and disappears with helpless maids right under her mother’s gaze. Sascha has been able to step in and save a few young women from his greedy clutches, but she still feels as if dipped in filth whenever he looks her way. She does not want to be next. Whether he – a single man of an age with her mother – has asked for her hand in marriage, she does not know. What she does know is that unless it would bring her mother prestige or a decided advantage, she is safe from Santano Enrique. For now. 

“You did very well this evening, Sascha,” her mother says evenly. “The Duke seemed quite charmed.”

“He was charmed by many. I did as best as I could,” Sascha replies evenly. Already she feels compelled to keep him as her own, a private stolen moment of her own pleasure. She does not want this to become a part of her mother’s endless machinations; she does not want to be a part of them herself anymore, truly. 

Silent, Nikita nods and looks out her window. Sascha breathes a silent sigh of relief and touches her throat. She thinks she can still feel the imprint of his fingers on her skin. 

*

Three days later, Sascha waits in her private sitting room. Spring sunlight seeps through the gauzy curtains. She can hear the hustle and bustle of the streets outside; Cheapside is always a busy neighborhood, mostly merchants making their homes here. Her mother and Santano are out in town proper for business, not to return for hours. Sascha twists her hands in her lap, and prepares to do something very improper. 

There is a knock on the door; Sascha rises as her lady’s maid, lovely trustworthy Faith, enters and curtsies. "The Duke of Ormonde here to see you, miss,” she says before stepping aside. 

Sascha feels the presence of him even before his shadow falls across the doorway. Lucas Hunter steps into the room, doffing his hat and bowing at the waist. Faith, with a quick look to Sascha, steps outside and shuts the door behind her. They are quite alone now, and Sascha is quite at sea as to what is next. 

“Miss Duncan.”

“You may call me Sascha, Your Grace,” she says softly, meeting his gaze even as she curtsies in return. 

“That’s rather forward of a nice woman like yourself,” he says with a small grin, sitting in the chair opposite her loveseat. 

She sits as well, feels the stir of a flush against her cheeks. “You are calling on me un-chaperoned and without my mother’s knowledge. My first name may be used at your leisure,” she says boldly. She wants to hear her name on his lips, wants him to know her beyond the Duncan name. There is something about him that makes her want to leave herself open bare and transparent. 

Lucas’s smile widens, all white teeth and sharp lines in the olive planes of his face. “True. Then you must call me Lucas.”

“That is a step too far. You are a duke.”

“I am quite aware,” he says amusedly. 

She smooths her hands over the pink-striped linen of her day dress, struggling not to smile. He raises such emotions within her, such as no one else has. “Your Grace, I would keep this at some level of propriety.”

“We will negotiate,” he says, draping an arm over the oak armrest. 

“As I am certain you have heard, I’m quite stubborn,” she says archly. 

“I like a challenge,” he retorts, eyes bright with the counter. 

And so begins the first of their weekly clandestine meetings in her private sitting room, in Cheapside. He comes in an unmarked livery, stays for an hour, and then departs. They speak of politics, of the seemingly endless conflicts with France, of society and its ills, of literature; he sparks conversations in her that she would never elsewise have. For two months, as spring turns into a warm London summer, under sharp blue skies, they meet at the social events her mother inveigles invitations to, and feign innocent interest in one another. It is in the privacy of her sitting room that they get to know each other, and she begins to want something more. 

Her mother and Santano repeat at each ball, each supper: interact with the duke. She has no idea _why_ until late June, with the rosebushes in front of the Cheapside house blooming. When Lucas comes to call that afternoon, Sascha is a tangle of nerves, her heart caught in her throat. 

“What’s wrong?” he asks as soon as he enters the sitting room. 

She blinks, standing motionless at the windows looking out onto the back streets. “I’m sorry?”

“Something’s wrong,” he says, moving towards her with feline grace. He takes her hands in his, smoothing his thumbs over her bare knuckles. It is the first time she has felt his bare skin against hers. Her throat burns with the memory of his hand at her necklace. 

Startled, she drops her eyes to the sleek hardwood floors. “I – nothing,” she says, biting her tongue. Her mother may wish for a proposal, but one will not come, and Sascha will not play for it. His reasons for these meetings and these attentions are his own; she has no control over him. 

She wants to keep it so. 

Lucas looks at her silently, his mouth a thin line. “I don’t think I believe you,” he says slowly, raising her hand to his lips. 

Shuddering at the touch of his lips to her bare skin, she bites the inside of her lip. “A confusing conversation with my mother, that’s all.”

 _You will marry him,_ her mother had said not an hour ago, Santano hovering over her shoulder. _You will marry him, and the child you bear him will be heir to all_

 _Not for years, if it all,_ Sascha had replied, not even commenting on the unlikeliness of herself as a wife for a duke. 

Santano’s eyes had glittered too dangerously at that. _We shall see, Sascha dear._

Sascha had spent the reminder of that hour listening in a fair amount of shock, but soaking in every word, even as Nikita and Santano spoke only to each other. To entrap a duke – the Duke of Ormonde! – was bold, even for a Duncan. And Sascha wants no part of it, never has. What she wants is to be her own person, to find her own way. She wants to keep the pleasure of Lucas Hunter’s attentions on her alone, though she doesn’t believe she is quite interesting enough for that. Nikita has always told her she was surprisingly unremarkable for a Duncan. 

Lucas takes advantage of her distraction to nip at her knuckles with sharp white teeth. The intimate touch startles her nearly out of her skin. “Your mother is an admirable businesswoman,” he says lightly. 

She sucks in a sharp silent breath, pursing her lips together. “Unfortunately, something we do not have in common.”

“I like you quite as you are, Sascha,” he says thoughtfully, releasing her hand. “In fact – “

He pauses, uncommonly hesitant. She cannot help but smile. “Your Grace, you are shy,” she teases. He has never been so. When arguing over the merits of another French war, or Sheridan’s plays, or the Prince of Wales’ follies, he has never been less than forthright in his opinions. His freedom allows for her own. She could never wish for him to stop being so. 

Cat-like gaze narrowing, he presses closer to her. “I have a question to ask you,” he says, voice gravelly. 

Her mouth parts, but she does not falter from his gaze. “Yes?” 

Smiling a little, he tilts his head. Sleek dark hair falls across his brow. “I do not trust your mother to ask you before forcing me to sign a contract – so I decided to ask you myself, propriety be damned.”

“Ask me what?” she says, mouth abruptly dry. 

In a moment he cups her cheek in his hand, palm to cheek. She knows she is warm against his skin, warmer still as he keeps his gaze on her. “Would you do me the honor of giving me your hand in marriage?”

She blinks, mouth agape with shock. Her eyes widen. _Marriage?_ “You want – you want to marry me?” she repeats through the lump in her throat. 

His mouth shifts, a curl at the corners of his lips. The creases of his eyes crinkle in amusement. “I do.”

Holding her breath, Sascha leans into the curve of his palm. “And you asked me first,” she says, all wonder. 

“I think I know you,” he says quietly. “I think you could use a little more control over your own life.”

“Yes,” she says, her hands fisting in the open lapels of his afternoon coat. 

He raises an eyebrow. “Yes?”

“Yes. I will marry you,” she says. 

A slow smile spreads his lips, sends shivers down her spine. “I had hoped you would say that,” he says, a touch smugly. She is about to retort when he leans in and kisses her, warm and open-mouthed, and she is at a loss for words. 

He murmurs what sounds like her name against her mouth, his tongue touching the seam of her lips. She swallows a gasp and closes her eyes, parting her trembling lips to his. She feels the shivers as they wrack her bones, the white-knuckled grip she keeps on his coat. His hand cups her cheek as the other slips to the curve of her waist through the muslin day dress. Soon she is nudged up against the window, his hand possessive on the length of her throat. Her pulse rattles under her skin. 

“I will speak to your mother directly. I trust she will have no objections?” he asks quietly. There is a strange gleam of knowing in his sharp green eyes. 

Sascha wets her kiss-swollen lips and sighs. “No,” she says. It is unfortunate that they’ve played right into her plans. 

_Not if I have anything to do with it_ , she thinks fiercely. He kisses her goodbye and is gone as easily as he arrived. She sits in her sitting room and touches her mouth, wonders at the protective instinct rising so heavily within her. 

The next day, just as they are finishing breakfast, a carriage with the Hunter livery arrives. Nikita and Santano send Sascha upstairs, as if she is still a child and not a woman of twenty-one in her third Season. Sascha lingers at the landing outside her bedroom with Faith, straining for a moment of clear listening as the meeting continues in the finely decorated formal east parlor. 

“You will take me with you, won’t you miss?” Faith asks at her elbow. 

“Yes,” Sascha says, gripping her hand. “Of course.”

Eventually they call her down. Sascha keeps the Duke’s gaze as she walks down the staircase, the skirts of her pink lawn day dress gathered in her hand lightly. Nikita lets the offer slip in condescending, flat tones; Sascha hears nothing of it. She keeps her gaze focused on Lucas, remembers the touch of his mouth to hers. 

“Thank you for your kindness, Your Grace,” she says at the appropriate moment, and extends her hand. 

Lucas’s eyes flash hot. She feels her face heat. “The pleasure is mine,” he replies, taking her hand and bringing her knuckles to his mouth for a light kiss. She remembers the press of his teeth against her bare skin, and shivers. 

_Soon_ , Sascha thinks, as her mother begins to speak once more. 

*

It is a whirlwind of preparations and dinners, but after a month – a month of stolen moments, of kisses in dark hallways, of meeting his companions and sharing secret looks, touches under tables – Sascha finds herself quite alone in strange chambers a world away from her mother’s home, and quite married. 

Faith, loyal to the last, helps Sascha with the laces of her wedding gown, a soft sky blue, and then leaves her alone in her new chambers with a wink and a smile. By the flickering candlelight Sascha begins to undo the braids in her long upswept hair, hints of red catching against the black in the warm light. There are nerves, yes; but here, she feels freer than she has in years. 

The ceremony was a simple thing, despite the attention from the papers and society at large. In the hall of his townhouse, Lucas and Sascha exchanged vows under the auspices of a priest from St. Paul’s; only the best, her mother has said repeatedly. After the wedding dinner, as the last to depart for her own home Nikita had lingered at her daughter’s side, instructions slipping out of her mouth like snakes in the tall grasses. 

_His fortune is ours, the opportunity ours, as long as you keep his interest. For our family name._

Sascha finds the taste in her mouth sour, when she thinks of it. 

Her fingers in the midst of untangling a rather tight braid, she is so focused that she does not notice the connecting door to her husband’s rooms open. Indeed, she does not notice his presence until he appears in the mirror behind her as she sits at the vanity in merely her shift and stockings. 

“You do not look overwhelmed,” Lucas says, his hands coming to rest on her shoulders. 

She meets his gaze in the mirror and smiles slightly. “Should I be?”

He grins. His shirt is loose at the throat, exposing a swath of olive skin and dark coarse hair. “I have been told I can be over-stimulating.”

“I have yet to have that particular experience,” she retorts, even as her fingertips shake with excitement and nerves as they unweave the smooth lengths of her hair. 

“A challenge, Sascha darling?” he asks with a laugh, moving his large warm hands to her hair. “Here, allow me.”

Slowly she drops her hands to her lap, watching in the mirror as he works deft fingers through her hair. The shimmering mass of it falls down her back as he works. Every time his fingers brush the bare skin of her neck, she swallows. The flush is heavy on her cheeks. 

“You are so lovely,” he says after a long spell of quiet, his hand curved under the heavy length of her hair to the nape of her neck. 

“You are kind to say so,” she says, meeting his eyes in the mirror. 

His mouth curls into something like a smile, if not as gentle. “Kind is not a word I hear often.”

“I imagine you do not let everyone in so closely,” she murmurs, tilting her neck back into the warm curve of his palm. 

A soft thoughtful sound escapes his throat. “Perhaps,” he says before he leans in and kisses her, his mouth warm against hers. An ache settles within her, too sharp and too swift. For a moment, all she can think of is the terror of her mother’s machinations, of her plans. 

Then he is pulling her to her feet, all but hauling her against his chest. Her hands fall to the loose linen of his shirt, pulling it from his breeches. This is all instinct, all fumbling practice; what she has to guide her is the low sounds he makes against her mouth, and the faint imprints of her dreams, of which he was the main focus. She has waited and yearned for this moment for too long, it seems. 

“I have thought of this for months,” he says against her lips, his hands stroking down the line of her back. His skin is a brand of heat through her shift. 

Wetting her lips, she opens heavy eyelids and meets his blown-out green gaze. “The time for thinking is past, I believe,” she says with more courage than she feels. Her hands slide under his shirt to hot ridged skin underneath. 

He hisses at the touch, skin to skin at last. But there is a knowing smile in his gaze, playing at the corners of his lips. “You are not as you seem, Sascha darling,” he says. 

“For you, I will always be as I am,” she promises him, a moment of raw truth in the midst of candlelight and their wedding night. _Believe me_ , she thinks violently, her heart thudding heavily in her chest. For so long she has hidden her true wants and desires under the thumb of the family name; now, with him, she wants to shed that mantle and be herself at all times. 

A warm wide palm cups her cheek, his thumb stroking the rise of her skin. “I know,” he says, sincere and firm. “And I will be as well.”

Her hands tighten their grip on his waist. She rises up on her bare tiptoes and kisses him, learning the pressure and kiss of teeth that he likes. His free hand is heavy on the small of her back, keeping her close. Eyes falling shut, she all but melts into him, the soft sounds escaping her throat unbidden. As she leans against his chest, she can feel the hitch of his breath, the press of his ribs to hers. _He wants me_ , she thinks; it sends a delicious shiver down her spine. For the life of her, she cannot understand _why_ , but he wants her, he cares for her; this is a gift she has been given. 

Lucas is all restraint and care as he touches her. He cups her hips through her linen shift and lifts her until she is curled against his chest, his arm hooked under her knees. She kisses him without hesitation or shame, but she cannot help but tremble as he lays her on their bed, stretching out next to her. In the candlelight, the angles of his face turn leonine, the curl of his mouth soft but daring. 

“You are so lovely,” he says again, stroking his hand over her leg. His fingers skim the hem of her shift. She tips her head back against the bedding and his face is there, green eyes searching. 

“Will you let me show you just how lovely you are, sweetheart?” he whispers, voice low. His mouth is quite close to hers. 

Swallowing hard, she lifts her hands to his jaw, touches the faint scars – three lines that mar nothing, only add to his strange beauty. There is fear in her, but there is anticipation too; she wants so badly to belong somewhere, and here might be a chance. To belong with him would be more than she could have ever imagined. 

“Yes,” she says, wetting her lips. “If I can do so in kind.”

The smile reaches his eyes this time, crinkles the corners and softens the sharp lines. “Oh, I do like you,” he murmurs, kissing her once before he sits up and strips off his shift. Left just in his breeches, he stretches out next to her, his hands sliding with gentle purpose over her waist to cup her breasts through her shift. She arches into the touch and breathes in sharply, her hands flexing on the wide expanse of his bare chest. The coarse feel of his chest hair is a new sensation against her palms, a texture she likes. 

“This is so strange,” she murmurs, unable to stop herself. For the first time, someone other than Faith is willing – eager – to listen to her thoughts, her words. 

He huffs out a laugh, pulling her night shift over her head and tossing it aside. His large hands smooth her hair back from her face, his knee nudging between hers. Now, but for the linen underclothes at her hips, she is bare to the night air and to his eyes. She cannot help but flush, shift her limbs; it is so strange to be so exposed, and yet feel quite so safe. 

“I suppose many married couples feel that way on their wedding night,” he says with a smile. His eyes nearly glow with pleasure in the dim candlelight. Palms warm against her cheeks, he leans into kiss her softly. “Is that what you meant, love?”

Sascha wraps her arms around his shoulders and shuts her eyes, her hips shifting restlessly against the bedding. His hips nudge and press against hers; she can feel the hard evidence of his want against her thigh. It sends a shudder right through her, all heat and desire. 

“Partially,” she gasps out against his lips as his hands slide down to her breasts once more, his thumb playing at the pebbled rise of her nipple. “But – oh – “

His lips curve against her neck. “Oh?”

She drags her fingertips down the bare line of his spine, reacting with pleasure to the arch of his back, the hiss of his breath against her throat. “I feel as if you truly see me,” she says into the spreading darkness, as the candles sputter toward their ends. 

Hands soft on her waist, he lifts his head to meet her gaze. “Oh, I see you,” he murmurs, kissing her softly as he traces a hand along her hip, peeling away the linen of her underclothes and cupping her between her thighs. The touch is startling to her slick flesh; she bites at his lip in surprise as her hips arch into his hand. 

“You’re beautiful,” he breathes against her mouth, shifting over her more fully. The weight of him is a pleasant heaviness. Her skin is pink and flushed with heat, pleasure suffusing every inch of her. The press and stroke of his fingers between her damp thighs sends shocks through her, loosening her limbs. Soft noises and moans inch out of her throat, and he coaxes them from her, gliding kisses over her collarbones and between her breasts as he teases her. There is so much to enjoy, so much pleasure – it is decidedly not what she had expected. Sensation rolls through her in waves, catching her breath and clouding her vision. 

As she comes down, breathing heavily, Lucas slides damp fingers away from her, shifts his body away. She opens her eyes and curls towards him, watching as he kicks his breeches and linens away. All of him is sleek and deadly in tone and shape, and she can see the hints of action; there are scars on his back and his arms she would know the stories of. 

He looks at her as he kneels back onto the bed, mouth curving. “Cold?” he teases, shifting himself over her. She puts her hands on his back, tracing the line of his spine, and spreads her thighs to his hips, letting instinct and sensation rule her. 

“Not anymore,” she says, voice hoarse, and means it in many ways. 

He covers her hip with his hand and nuzzles her throat. “Good,” he says, petting her in slow gentle strokes. “Just stay with me, Sascha. Right here,” he murmurs, nipping at her jaw. She moans and arches into his touch, wet and ready and flushed to the touch. 

When he enters her, a stretch and press she was warned of, she cannot help but stiffen. He says her name, low and hoarse in his throat, his clever strong fingers teasing the sensitive nub between her thighs. She stretches her spine and digs her fingers into his shoulders as he moves within her, slow and steady. He soothes her and kisses her, his mouth touching her skin. He has a hand braced next to the spill of her hair on the pillow, supporting his weight, his fingers playing in the loose dark waves. 

“Relax, kitten,” he says against her cheek, his breaths harsh and strained. “I have you.”

Whimpering, she turns to find his mouth, kissing him as her hips begin to move with his. It’s a slow sweep of pleasure through her veins, an ache she cannot seem to satisfy. Her nails dig into his muscled back and she moans into his mouth. She shakes with the feel of his skin against hers, the marks of possession they exchange with teeth and lips and nails. And when he finishes, his mouth buried against her throat and his hand digging into her hip, she wraps her arms around him and holds him as he shakes, pulls him even closer. 

With the room swathed in darkness, he slides away from her, smoothing her hair away from her damp forehead. She pulls back the bed linens and crawls under them, watching him as she tries to regain her breath, her semblance of balance. Instead of leaving, as she had thought he would, in a moment he is back at her side, sliding under the linens with her. 

“I know perhaps it isn’t proper,” he murmurs, voice warm, “but I would share your bed even just to sleep.”

In response, she tucks herself into his shoulder, her fill of him hardly satiated. She is sweat-damp and achy, but she feels light, content. “I like not being alone,” she says softly. 

He strokes his hand through her hair, his mouth at her brow. “I do see you, kitten. You were suffocating under your mother and her partner’s thumb,” he says after a quiet moment. 

“Do you think you’ve saved me?” she queries, unwilling to meet his gaze even in the darkness. 

“No,” he says, his thigh shifting between hers. “You’re perfectly capable of rescuing yourself, given the chance.”

She thinks on that for a moment, on the chances given her. Every opportunity she had to resist the suppression of her upbringing, she’s taken. And when he came to her to ask for her hand, he came to her before anyone; he gave her the chance to make her own decision. 

Smiling slightly, she strokes her hand down his chest. She would ask the questions that have weighed on her tongue for weeks now, the whys and hows of his decisions. But here, escaping the specter of her mother and her plans, in the circle of his arms, she is happy and safe. 

“Will you stay?” she asks softly, her voice low with fatigue. 

He passes a hand over her hair, the smooth skin of her back. “It would take an army to pull me away,” he says, low and fierce. 

The promise soothes her to sleep. 

*

Sascha wakes in the cool blue pre-dawn light, naked and tucked up against Lucas as he sleeps. She blinks quickly and tips her head back against the pillows behind them, watching him. There is an ease he has in sleep that she has never seen before. He is still and soothed. She wants to keep him that way. 

She knows of his parents’ death, when he was quite young. A kidnapping gone wrong, one that had gripped society and the gossip hounds for a long time. But that is society’s perspective; she wonders if he will ever trust her enough with his heart to tell her the truth of it. She hungers to be that treasured, that beloved; if he asked for her heart, she would give it gladly. 

Her fingertips creep over his chest, touching the warm taut skin that is hers now in the eyes of church and state. He shifts and mumbles in his sleep, the broad hand splayed on her back moving slightly. Wetting her lips, Sascha sits up next to him, her hair loose over her back and shoulders and chest, and watches him, her heart aching. Her fingers slide over the ball and curve of his shoulder, the dip of his collarbone. She wants to soak in the warmth and feel of his skin against hers. Her eyes flicker to the clothes abandoned on the gleaming hardwood floors, the heavy blue velvet drapes pulled away from the bed, the open connecting door to the duke’s chambers. Landscapes hang on the walls, the seaside and the countryside and every place she’s never been. 

Palm settling over his heart, she watches him, the dark lashes crescents against his dusky skin, his black hair. In sleep his mouth is serious; he is a serious man, with responsibilities by the shoulder-full. She knows of his many properties, of his investments, of his seat in the House of Lords. His reputation is one of strength and neutrality; he will not choose sides, not publically. She has married a man of unlimited opportunity and power; she wants to keep him safe. 

“Have you finished your examination?” he asks, his eyes still closed, his voice rough with sleep. 

Biting her lip, she inches the sheet over her nakedness, watching as he opens his eyes. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

Bleary-eyed, he smiles slightly. Under the sheets, his hand slips over her thigh. “I don’t mind.”

She lowers her gaze for a moment, smiling faintly. She wonders if she has ever been so happy to wake up to a new day in London in her life. There were moments in her extreme youth, when she would escape from her nursemaids and find her mother in her office, sit under her desk and listen as Nikita took on the world and won the majority of the time, that she felt content and wanted. That faded as she grew up and became another tool in the Duncan machinations; now, she feels a little of that young contentment creep back. 

She wonders how she might ruin it, eventually. 

For now, as he strokes her bare thigh, she meets his eyes and tilts her head. “We should sleep.”

He blinks, a grin curling the corners of his mouth. “Or we could not.”

Sinking her teeth into her bottom lip, she blushes. Lucas laughs and grasps her around the waist, pulling her into his lap as he sits up against the pillows. The contact is intimate and still new. She digs her fingers into his abdomen, straddling him as she would riding a horse astride. She likes it, the feel of him between her thighs, all hot male warmth and strength. 

Pulling the sheet away from her, he looks at her intently. His hands wrap around the lengths of her wavy hair, push it back over her shoulder to bare her chest to his gaze. She swallows hard but lets him look his fill. She has looked hers, after all. 

“You’re so damn beautiful,” he says, voice gruff. His eyes are bright in the pre-dawn light. 

Flushing hotly, Sascha goes to cover her face with her hands. He catches her wrists in his gentle grip and holds them away. “I could look at you all day and all night and never tire of it,” he murmurs, drawing his fingertips over the fine bones of her wrists, her inner arms. 

“There is more to me than looks,” she says pointedly, still blushing. 

He grins and leans into bury his face into the curve of her neck, inhale. “I know.” He bites at her pulse and she lets out a soft moan, melting under his attentions. Should she want him as much as she does? Is this not unnatural? 

“I could listen to you talk about anything,” he murmurs, his lips soft against her skin. He drops her wrists and cups her breasts in his palms. “You understand so much so quickly. You hide your intelligence from so many.”

“I had to hide,” she whispers, undone by his affection, by his touch. His words sink into her heart and warm her through, as much as any kiss or caress. 

Lucas stills, his fingers curving to her breast. He raises his head and looks at her straight-on with those fierce green eyes, the angles and scars of his face softening in the pale light. 

“I know,” he says quietly, touching his forehead to hers. “Never again.”

In response, she cups his face in her hands and kisses him, boldly and intensely. Her eyes close and she licks into his mouth, remembering his own touches and actions from the hours before. His moan is a delicious sound that sinks into her bones. She arches into his touch as his hands cup and stroke her breasts, tease her nipples to tight aching points. He kisses her as he pushes her back against the bedclothes once more, their heads at the foot of the bed and their feet kicking at the pillows as they tangle their limbs. His lips slide over her jaw, her throat, her collarbones. 

When he would move down her body, to kiss and tongue at her breasts, she clenches her fingers in his hair and stops him for a moment, their gazes meeting. 

“Don’t use me,” she whispers, an awkward moment stripped bare. “Lucas –“

His gaze softens, even as desire darkens his skin. He leans down and kisses her chin, her lips, soft and gentle. “You aren’t meant to be used. You are a power in your own right, darling.”

And then, those words echoing in her brain, he licks and sucks and kisses his way over her breasts, her belly. He kisses the birthmark on her hipbone as his fingers drag through the dark curls between her legs, teasing her wet folds. 

“You can’t really mean to – “ she trails off, voice breathless. 

He grins up at her from between her thighs, his hands spreading her for his perusal. “My shy darling,” he murmurs. 

“Not shy. Unlearned in these ways,” she protests, managing a glare. 

Lucas smiles, as if a cat gotten into the cream. “Just relax,” he croons, his wet tongue licking at her inner thigh. 

A low shudder of a moan curls from her mouth as she lays back, her fingers digging into his hair. It’s like silk under her fingertips, thick and delicious. It feels smooth against the skin of her thighs as he kisses up to her sex, his tongue and lips eating at the slick evidence of her desire for him. She can hear it, the wet sounds, the moans from his throat, her own low sounds. Two thick fingers tease and curve inside of her as he licks around her clit, teasing her just where she wants his touch. She shuts her eyes and lets the pleasure crest through her, until she feels nothing but her nerve endings, the press of his face between her thighs, the whorls of his ears against her skin. 

She is boneless and spent when he pulls away, stroking her curls as he kisses her thigh, his mouth sticky. Shivering, she tugs at him and he comes over her, rising above her as she opens her eyes. He is all shadows and angles as the dawn slips in through the curtained windows, his arm sliding under her lower back to tilt her hips as he enters her. Now, he is not slow; he takes her with an animalistic fierceness, thrusts that mark her as his. She digs her nails into his shoulders, rakes them down his back as he groans her name, biting and kissing at her throat and shoulders. He comes with a hard shudder, a low cry of her name, all sinew and muscle and strength above her. 

Somehow, she ends up twined around him with his back to her chest as their breathing settles and their bodies cool, slick with sweat. The air smells of sex and them, and it invigorates her. She wraps her arm around his waist and kisses his shoulder, his bicep. He curls his fingers around her wrist and laughs, a low sound. 

“I like waking up with you here,” she says truthfully.

Lucas turns to face her, his face stark and bare in the early morning light. “I do, too,” he says. 

It could be a falsity. But as he kisses her, strokes his fingers through her hair, she refuses to think on that possibility. Not here. Not now.

*

“Is it consummated?”

In the midst of stirring cream into her steaming tea, Sascha pauses. Her gaze flickers to her mother, sitting across the small parlor used for morning visits. Santano keeps his eyes fixed on Sascha, slouched in his chair next to Nikita. 

The Duncan faction wastes little time in visiting the new Duchess of Ormonde in her married home. The Ormonde townhouse borders Buckingham Park, a few stretches of grassy, well-manicured lawn from the Devonshires. Indeed, Sascha has barely had time to explore her new home in the two days she has lived in it, between her mother’s immediate and early visit and her husband’s attentions. 

The skin of her throat flushes at the memory of those attentions. Sascha blinks, keeps her face in still lines. “Mother, I hardly believe that is proper conversation,” she says at last, gaze flickering to Santano. 

“I’ve seen and heard worse, Sascha,” Santano replies, voice cool. But his eyes carry interest, too much interest. Sascha’s skin crawls as he looks at her over his tea. 

“Your marriage is a matter of business, and as such he must be here,” Nikita replies evenly. “He is my business associate.”

“My marriage – “

“Is it consummated?” Nikita asks again, her tone sharpening. 

Setting her teaspoon down in the saucer with a clatter too loud, Sascha takes her time to sip her tea. Her gaze settles on her mother, cool and collected in the mid-morning sunlight. 

“If it was not?” she asks after a moment, voice clear. 

“Then you will have to attempt to suppress your silly sensibilities and get on with it,” Santano says crudely. “An heir must be had.”

The marks left from Lucas’s hands and mouth burn under the fabric of her green muslin day dress. The pale blue sash at her bosom seems too tight around her ribs. “It was an overwhelming day,” she murmurs, casting her eyes downwards into the milky surface of her tea. Her pulse races against her wrist; what game are they playing? And how on earth can she play it against them? She is just the overly-sensitive, dull daughter that Nikita wishes were a son. 

“I supplied you with ample information as to your marital duty,” Nikita says briskly. “I would have you remember it. The Duke is clearly enamored, and you must allow him that release.”

Sascha suppresses a flinch. It all sounds so cold, so calculated and emotionless, coming from her mother and Santano. Sascha’s memories of the evening, of Lucas stretched over her and his hands in her hair, are much different. 

“I shall do my best, Mother,” she says at last, sipping her tea. 

“You can do better than that,” Santano says sharply. 

“This is not my mother’s house,” Sascha retorts, tongue getting the better of her at last. “This is _my_ house, sir. And you will not speak to me in such a fashion!” Her voice rises with her anger, her frustration. 

“Sascha,” Nikita says, voice low with warning. 

There is no freedom with them here, Sascha thinks as she sets her cup and saucer down and sets her jaw. London will never be anything but a prison, even within the walls of her husband’s home. Perhaps, perhaps if she told Lucas – 

“My apologies,” she says tersely, rising from her settee. “I am overtired. And I have household business to attend to this afternoon, so if you will pardon me –“

“Of course,” Nikita says evenly, and rises. “We would not want to keep you from your new duties.”

The edge of her tone alone sends an unfortunate shudder through Sascha’s spine. She cannot show them out quickly enough. 

“Faith,” she says later, as she and her lady’s maid fix her hair for dinner that evening. Lucas, who has been out since breakfast, has a few of his boon companions and their wives coming for the evening, and though she has met them previously during their engagement, she wants to continue to make a good impression. 

“Yes, madam?” Faith murmurs, her slim freckled hands pinning back heavy waves from Sascha’s face. 

“I need you to not speak of the Duke and I’s evenings together to anyone,” Sascha says, voice low. 

Their eyes meet in the mirror. Faith is steady, sure. She does her name credit. 

“What happens between you and the Duke is your business, madam,” Faith says softly. “I wouldn’t presume to know a thing.”

For a brief moment, Sascha reaches up to squeeze Faith’s fingers as they rest on her shoulder. There are some things she can believe in. Faith is one of those; hopefully, her husband will be another. 

*

Her mother and Santano come every morning for a week straight, until June has turned to July and summer is well and entrenched in the cityscape. The mornings are overwarm, the evenings full of Lucas’s attentions, and Sascha feels herself toppling with the balance of it all. There are three faces she wears; one for her mother and her interests, one for society, and one for her husband. There is no telling which is closest to her true self; sometimes, Sascha hardly knows herself. 

Eight days after she is married, her monthly indisposition begins. Sascha wakes to terrific cramps and blood spots on the linens, and an understanding Faith; Lucas has already risen, and she is spared this embarrassment for this month, at least. 

“Your mother has sent word that she will be delayed this morning,” Faith says as Sascha helps her strip the bedding, the July sun already hot and beating across the sleek wood floor. 

“Hell,” Sascha mutters, brow furrowed and mouth cross. Her frustrations have gotten the best of her today. “I wish to god we would just leave London, as to avoid these visits.”

“Aye, and the weather is too awful as well,” Faith says lightly, her red hair shining in the sunlight. 

Sascha smiles wryly, touching her damp brow. She wonders how long she can pretend to have avoided the consummation of her marriage, how long she can delay the next step of her mother and Santano’s machinations. Even now, they may be laying the seeds for their assumption of Lucas’s wealth and lands. 

“I can always say you’re indisposed,” Faith says after a moment, her head peeking over the linens bundled in her arms. 

“That has never stopped my mother,” Sascha murmurs, sighing at the knock on the door. The maids scurry in with clean linens, and Sascha steps back to observe. She rubs at the nape of her neck, biting the inside of her lip. The running of the household is nothing strange to her; her mother let her have the run of the Duncan household to manage, as Nikita was too concerned with the Duncan business interests. Even the size of the Ormonde management has yet to astonish or frighten Sascha from the work of it. She finds it pleasurable, to make choices based on her wants (and Lucas’s), rather than those she does not care for. 

“No, I must see her, or she will find me,” Sascha adds at last, mouth pressed into a thin line. 

“Who will find you?”

Faith and the two maids drop into low curtseys as Lucas’s form fills the open doorway. Sascha dips her head and smiles slightly, her hands pressed to the blue-sprigged muslin of her gown. 

“My lord.”

Lucas tilts his head, smiling slightly. “Formalities, wife?”

Her gaze flickers to the maids and back. “I had thought you out for the morning on business,” she says as he comes further into the room. The maids finish their making of the bed and hurry away with a quick curtsey. Faith, with a nod and a deep knee bend, follows suit with the soiled linens, leaving Sascha and Lucas quite alone. 

“My appointment was with your mother, among others,” he says lightly, reaching out to touch her cheek. “Sascha, you look unwell.”

Wetting her lips, she tips her cheek into the touch. “I – it is my monthly indisposition, sir,” she says honestly, voice cracking with the embarrassment. But he would find out when he came to her bed this evening; she may as well save him the trip. 

Brow furrowing, he strokes a thumb over her jawline. “I see,” he says quietly. Then, he wraps an arm around her waist and brings her into the shelter of his chest. “Is it painful?”

“Today it is,” she says, turning her cheek to his shoulder. His hand slips up her spine, soothing through the airy muslin. 

“Then perhaps you should rest. Your mother cannot need to see you that urgently,” he says close to her brow. 

She blinks, watching the stretch and turn of the muscles in his throat under olive skin. “I – “

“Seeing your mother every day since our marriage is not the chance at freedom I imagined for you, kitten,” he murmurs, voice reminding her of so much skin against her own, of his mouth at her breast and throat, of the touch of his fingers between her thighs. She shivers, her hands gripping the open halves of his jacket. 

“I would prefer not to see her, it is true,” she says haltingly. 

“Then you won’t,” he says, angling himself back to look into her eyes. “Yes?”

“Yes,” she says, smiling slightly. 

He leans down to kiss her, his mouth soft and easy on hers. The ease with which he touches her is still precious, still amazing to her. “I’ll have a note sent. Be at ease,” he says, kissing her once more before he leaves her be.

To be at ease means to be in the library on the first floor of the townhouse. Sascha, relaxed and easy at the thought of a day to herself, meets briefly with the housekeeper to go over the day’s meals and the packing plans for Lucas’s departure from London on business in the country, and then settles in the library. According to Lucas, this is but a portion of his collection. The rest is in the country manor – a manor she knows little of, except for its northern location near Sunderland; it is far, far away from London and the world she has known since birth, and she cannot wait to see it with her own eyes. 

“May I interrupt?”

She looks up at Lucas’s voice, smiling slightly. “Of course,” she says, setting her book of poetry aside. The settee is wide and long enough for two, sitting against the windows overlooking the park; Lucas settles on it with grace and ease, sitting close to her. 

“Your mother was rather displeased with your cancelling her visit,” he says after a moment, taking Sascha’s hand between both of his. 

“She likes getting her way,” she says wryly, biting at the inside of her lip. She is certain he suspects something of her mother, of Santano; whether he believes her a part of it, she isn’t so sure. 

“Is there a particular reason why she needs to see you so urgently?” he asks, voice even. 

A lump rises in her throat. “I – “

She pauses, looking at her hand between his. He strokes his thumb over her knuckles, and waits. His gaze is heavy, guarded; what must he think of her? 

“I would not ask you to betray your mother,” he says after a moment. “I only wonder if perhaps you wouldn’t be happier with more distance.”

 _Rescuing myself,_ she thinks, watching him. Never has anyone expressed such faith in her own abilities before; never has someone thought so keenly of her feelings. It gives her hope, and yet she cannot help but be suspicious. To everyone she is a pawn; perhaps to her husband she is no different. 

But when she watches the glide of his hand over hers, keeps his bright green gaze, she cannot help but hope. 

“She is very curious as to the consummation of our marriage,” she says at last. 

His mouth thins, turns down at the corners. “Is she.”

Swallowing thickly, she turns her palm upwards in his grasp and slips her fingers between his. “For what reason, I am not certain,” she says quietly. It tastes like the lie that it is; but she cannot trust him so fully yet. 

“I can imagine a reason or two,” he says grimly. 

_Or thousands_ , she thinks sadly. 

“And what have you told her?” he asks after another quiet moment. 

“Nothing particularly informative, as I believe that business pertains directly to the two of us,” she says honestly. “I don’t appreciate her level of interest.”

He looks at her steadily; there are moments when she thinks he can see right into her, see how damaged she truly is by her upbringing and her connections, her sensibilities. One day, he will learn the truth of her and be disappointed beyond words; she hopes she can stave that day off as best as possible. 

“Neither do I, to be frank,” he says at last. “Let me propose something to you.”

“You’ve already married me. Too late for that,” she teases, heart in her throat. 

His laugh is a low, lovely sound between them. The hot July sunlight seeps through the curtains and gleams against his dark hair. 

“There is some business with my lands and the neighboring lords I must deal with. I had thought to just go on my own and return here for you shortly, but – what if we leave tomorrow? Together?”

She blinks, a smile playing at her lips. “I – Forgo the rest of the season?”

“Absolutely. And tell no one,” he says with a smile. “A pre-honeymoon, if you will.”

 _Tell no one_. “I would like that,” she says quietly. 

“Your mother is not so impolite as to show up without previously invited,” he says, eyes glimmering with amusement, and something more dangerous. “Perhaps it will be the respite you need.”

“For both of us,” she says, tilting her head. 

A smile settles on his mouth, knowing and pleased. “You’ll like Darkriver,” he says, shifting closer and cupping her face in his hands. “And of course, you will meet my neighbors.”

“I do like the friends you have here,” she says, thinking of Lords Christianson and Bennett; Dorian is a charming fellow with a serious streak, while Clay is reserved yet kind. “I am certain your friends at home will be lovely as well.”

“You think very well of everyone,” he says with a low chuckle, leaning into kiss her softly. Her cheeks flush pink with the gentle attention. 

“I think well of those who have earned it,” she murmurs against his lips. 

His gaze darkens. “A logical notion,” he says quietly, stroking a thumb over her cheekbone. Again, it is if he is trying to see right through her. The darker parts of her nature – for she is her mother’s daughter – shy from that serious look. 

“When will we leave?” she asks, touching his throat, the loose undone fall of his cravat. 

“Tomorrow, if you can bear the speed.”

“Of course,” she says, kissing him once more before rising from the settee. “I will speak to Mrs. Smith about the arrangements right now.”

The pleased and satisfied look he fixes on her as she leaves him for her task warms her through. And, when she is curled up in bed that evening, waiting for pained sleep, he comes in and settles into his usual spot, his warm chest curved to her back. 

“Lucas, I – “

He slips his arm around her middle, his large hand a brand of heat through her nightshift, against her aching belly. “I told you I wouldn’t go,” he says against her braid, his breath soft on the nape of her neck. “I like being with you, kitten.”

Every part of her relaxes. She leans her head back against him and curves her hand to his, flat on her stomach. “I have no gesture to give in-kind,” she says softly. 

Kissing her neck, he nuzzles his nose against her skin. Sometimes, he is positively feline. “You said yes to my suit. That is gift enough,” he says, voice husky. 

Sascha shuts her eyes, happy beyond words and concerned with what traps may lay ahead. 

*

It is a two-day journey to his estates in the north. Lucas prefers to ride on horseback, and so Sascha spends much of her time alone in her carriage, her head nearly out the window as to see everything she can on the journey.

“It is as if you have never seen the countryside,” Lucas says to her as they stop for the night the second day of their journey. Darkriver is only half a day’s ride away, but he will not risk late-night travel with two carriages and his wife. 

Sascha looks down for a moment, her hands twisting in her lap. She likes the inn they’ve stopped at, likes the hustle and bustle of the place. The rooms upstairs look clean, if sparse, and the tavern on the ground level is quiet. The accents are thick and the ale cold, and Sascha likes all of it. 

“I haven’t,” she says, wrapping her hands around her mug of ale. Faith and Lucas’ bodyman Vaughn sit at the table next to them, talking quietly to themselves over their meals. 

Lucas sits next to her at their little table in the corner near the banked hearth, his elbow touching hers. “Never?”

“My mother’s business rarely lets her leave town,” she says, her back ramrod straight. Propriety is everything, ingrained in her since birth. “And we have no other family.”

The hum of the tavern settles in the silent moment between them. Sascha sips her ale, eyes flickering through the thinly-populated area. Everything for the last two weeks has been sensation after sensation, new experiences all around; it is overwhelming, but she likes it. It keeps her mind busy and distracted, even as she mulls over her mother’s plans and strategies. 

She wonders what her mother did when she realized Sascha and Lucas were gone. 

“I know very little of your family, apart from your mother’s apparently single-handed success in business,” he says after a moment. “Who was your father?”

“A minor baron of little consequence, but who was a member of the King’s household,” she says, dragging her fingers along the worn rim of her mug. “He died when I was quite young – I don’t remember him at all.”

“Strange that she does not speak of him.”

“There was little affection between them, from what I can tell,” she says softly. “Her father arranged a profitable marriage for her, and when my father passed away, she took advantage of his status and wealth. She is an adept businesswoman.”

He leans in closer, green eyes bright in the evening candlelight. “She wants me to invest in her newest venture with the Dutch,” he says. 

“I wouldn’t,” Sascha says immediately, imprudently. She flushes with it, looks away as the tavern maid brings plates of meat and potatoes. Neither of them speak until she has left with a curtsey and a request for more ale. 

“You wouldn’t?” he repeats, picking up a fork. 

_Idiot_ , Sascha thinks sharply. “Certainly you have your own opinions on the matter,” she says after a pause. “But I would not want you to tie yourself too closely too fast to the Duncan interests.”

“I married her daughter,” he says wryly. 

Chest tight, she meets his gaze. “But you didn’t do that for business. I thought,” she says steadily, her voice reedy. 

Lucas’s gaze flickers, his mouth twitches. There is little pleasant there for her to see. 

“Ah,” she says after a moment. Her chest blooms with pain. “I understand.”

“Sascha – “

“The Dutch venture is sure to be unsteady, due to the continued unease between the French and the English,” she interrupts, voice cool. “It will be risky to attempt the amount of shipping necessary for financial profit, especially if war breaks out in full force once more. You may never see your investment returned, and she and Santano will have a grip on you because of it. That is why it is risky.”

His hand covers hers on the table, a touch too intimate for public company. “Sascha, you don’t understand.”

She slips her hand from his and begins to eat. “I think I do. There is no need to coddle me, sir. I am a grown woman,” she says, meeting his gaze for a moment before she turns back to her observations of the room, of Faith and Vaughn the next table over. 

“I have never coddled you,” he says at last, voice even. His breath is warm at her ear. “What did you expect of me?”

“You courted me,” she retorts, cheeks flushed and eyes narrow as she turns her face to his. “You courted me in secret for two months, and asked me to marry you before you went to my mother. I thought – if you had just wanted the connection for business purposes, I would have understood. It makes logical sense. And I would have consented no matter what – “

“Because marriage with a duke is nothing to say no to,” he interrupts, a cold look to his eyes. 

“Because you were kind,” she shoots back, keeping her voice low. “You were kind to me at the ball, and you listened to me when I spoke, and that’s more than I’ve had in a lifetime. And I could have been content. You didn’t have to – “

She stops, tears hot behind her eyes. Inhaling deeply, she sets her fork down and wets her lips. “I thought it was more than business,” she says steadily. “You seemed as if you cared, and I thought it was true. Clearly, my mother’s lessons did not take.”

“Sascha –“

“You are a good man, and I am content to be your wife. But now, let us not pretend it was anything more than a business contract,” she says coolly, rising. “I will see you upstairs, sir.”

She walks out of the dining room and finds her way upstairs to their rooms, tears smarting behind her eyes. What a fool she feels concerning the last few months! The secret courtship, just another business tactic? She has wondered day after day, why choose her; now, it seems she understands at last. He is more artful in his ways with her than Nikita ever was, but it is still the same result. She is still a pawn. What was a new beginning has become the same old story, she thinks as she undresses alone and slides into bed. She will not cry; but the ache of misunderstanding is just as harsh. 

When Lucas comes into their room, she feigns sleep, curled up on her side with her back to the door. He does not try to curl behind her, to touch her. The inches between them on the bed seem like miles. 

*

In the morning, when Sascha is already situated in the carriage and waiting to depart, the door opens once more and Lucas jumps in, face drawn. 

“I would ride with my wife today,” he says crisply. 

“This really isn’t necessary,” she says evenly. 

“I think it is,” he retorts, shutting the door and thumping on the roof of the carriage with his walking stick. 

Suppressing an eye roll, Sascha sits back and looks out the window to the countryside, the green landscape sharp and verdant, the hills rising from the ground in long, tree-dotted curves. It is beautiful, and leaves a dry taste in her mouth. 

“You were not who I was supposed to marry,” Lucas says after what seems like hours of silence, of their breathing and the crunch of road gravel under their wheels. 

Smoothing the skirt of her blue-sprigged day-dress, she glances across the carriage at him. “I suspect it was quite a surprise to your society friends,” she says lightly. 

He doesn’t smile. His dark gaze is serious and intent, focused on her. “Viscount Lauren was expecting me to put forth an offer for his niece Sienna this season – an offer which would have infuriated my friend Lord Snow and Sienna herself– but it was the expected match. We were to officially debut at the Devonshires’ ball.”

Wetting her lips, she stretches her hands flat on her skirt. It feels as if her skin misses his at times. She is nearly outside of herself with the longing to touch him, and knows she is too far gone to be cold to him for long. 

“I didn’t – do you know the Laurens?”

She shrugs. “Socially. I have never had the pleasure of a personal appointment.”

He sighs heavily. “Sienna is a lovely woman, but wants to marry Snow, who is being the most difficult man alive about all of it – and I couldn’t bear to ruin her life like that. When I saw you in the corridor, looking at that painting – “

He pauses, shaking his head. The corners of his mouth soften, the three scars she still knows nothing of softening with them. “I was hiding from Lauren, trying to think of how I would explain this away. And I saw you.”

“And saw your chance?” she asks dryly.

“In a sense,” he says, shaking his head. “You’re so – I knew who you were, but I’d never seen you up close. Sascha, you are so beautiful. And you spoke of that painting – that landscape that the Devonshires probably don’t even think of any longer – with such appreciation and care. You, in the five minutes I had you alone, captured my attention. I didn’t give a damn about your mother or society or anything else. I knew I wanted to spend more time with you.”

She exhales unsteadily, her fingers trembling in her lap. Sunlight streams between their feet in thick slats. “Lucas, you don’t have to do this.”

A small kind of growl inches out of his throat. With a feline grace he shifts himself to her side of the carriage, taking her bare hands in his. Gloves are unnecessary between married people, he teased her one morning last week, and kissed all the fingertips at his disposal. 

“I do, because I should have said so weeks ago. I’m sure your mother told you plenty concerning my motives, and you’ve been left to imagine more, especially after my idiocy of last evening,” he says, watching her with hawkish focus. “I courted you because I wanted to know you. I asked you to marry me because I –“

He stops himself short, brow furrowed. She lets her fingers press and sink against his, her heart beating a hard and fast rhythm against her chest. 

“Your mother’s business ventures were never my concern,” he says after a strange, pointed silence. “I could care less for any of it. I was only ever interested in you, Sascha. To have you in my life was my goal. If I played into your mother’s intentions, it was a small price to pay to have you here now.”

Every fiber of her screams for him to run. She wants to spill everything, to run her mouth of her mother’s plans and secrets, to give him time to escape. But then he kisses her, kisses her so fully and deeply that she cannot do anything but wrap her arms around his neck and sink into him. She can hardly string together coherent thoughts with his hands finding her waist and his mouth sliding warm and wet over hers. 

A large pit in the road jars the carriage, knocks their noses together. He cups her face and meets her gaze, smiling slightly. 

“Are you hurt?”

“Not at all,” she says, her hands finding the front of his waistcoat.

“I am sorry for how I put things last night,” he says, stroking his thumbs over her cheekbones. “Subtlety has never been my strongest suit.”

“What do you really want to know?” she asks, shifting closer to him. His hands are deliciously warm and callused on her skin. She misses the feel of them all over her body. 

His gaze darkens, sobers. “I think your mother has plans for us, and I’d like to know how to protect you from them.”

“I honestly couldn’t tell you,” she says, truth loosening her tongue. “Only that she is quite insistent on my producing an heir.”

Lucas’s hand shifts, his arm curving around her shoulders to tuck her closer to his side. “That’s worrisome.”

“And truly, it isn’t Mother I’m necessarily worried for. Her business associate and comptroller is an awful sort,” Sascha adds, looking up at him. It is on the tip of her tongue to share her suspicions, to share the unsettled feeling down her spine when Santano looks at her. But she does not; suspicion is not proof, and discomfort is expected for all women. She knows this. 

“I know,” he says distractedly, smoothing his finger down the line of her bare arm. “I’m not entirely sure how to avoid – well – “

“Apart from the fact that you _need_ an heir, and that is what I’m here for, I would be extremely disappointed if we were to halt sexual congress,” she says flatly. 

A rumble of a laugh vibrates in his chest. “First of all, that isn’t what I believe you’re here for. You’re here because I wanted to marry you and you wanted to marry me. And secondly, I find it so attractive when you speak academically,” he murmurs, leaning down to kiss her. 

She allows the caress for a brief moment before she pulls back, meeting his eyes. “I am not a spy for my mother. I am not anyone’s chess piece,” she says quietly, lips pursed thinly. “I care for you, and I am your wife. If you want me to trust in you, so you should in me.”

He looks at her for a long moment, gaze soft, before he nods. “I do trust you. More than nearly anyone else.”

Smiling slightly, she leans up to kiss him despite the rattling of the carriage. His hand rests on her knee, warm through the muslin, and she shivers. Here, it seems that a true partnership has forged between them at last. It comforts her, soothes her; it even leads her to believe she may love him, one day. 

For now, she kisses him in the carriage, and lets his hands and mouth repent where his words cannot reach. 

*

Her fifth day at Darkriver, a letter arrives from London. 

“It’s from Duncan House,” Faith says helpfully as she hands it to Sascha. 

Frowning, Sascha leans back in her desk chair. The personal study set aside for the Duchess’s use is spacious and warm, overlooking the southwest side of the park. The river edges along the far side, glimmering darkly in the summer sunshine. Though still decorated in the style of Lucas’s late mother, Sascha likes it quite a lot. 

In fact, there is little not to like of the country estate that is now hers as well as her husband’s. The staff is friendly and clearly devoted to Lucas, and Mrs. Ryder, the housekeeper and wife of Lucas’s steward, has been nothing but warm and helpful as Sascha gains her bearings. Tonight they host a dinner for Lucas’s neighbors, including Lord Snow and the Laurens, as well as Christianson and Bennett, who are coming directly from town with their wives. It would make a lesser woman nervous; but Sascha finally feels settled in her new life and her new role. 

“She wasted little time in informing me of her displeasure,” Sascha murmurs, opening the letter with a quick flick of her wrist. “Oh – multiple sides of the paper.”

Faith sighs and bobs a curtsey before retreating. She has been spending an awful lot of time with Vaughn, and smiling about it. Sascha’s rather amused by it all, though it turns sour as she skims her mother’s missive. 

_Sascha, Santano and I were incredibly displeased to arrive at the Duke’s London home to find you departed for the country. This sort of misinformation is not to be born –_

“That is not a content look upon my wife’s pretty face.”

“Your wife is getting a distant scolding from her mother,” Sascha murmurs, not looking up. 

Lucas grunts from across the room. He shuts the door behind him. The latch of the lock echoes in her ears. 

“She didn’t waste time, did she?” he asks, voice cool as he walks across the gleaming hardwood floors. 

She glances at Lucas. He is without his waistcoat, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up to his elbows, exposing dark olive skin. It is decidedly casual, but there is no mistaking the power lingering behind every line and cut of muscle and bone. He is the master of this house, this estate, and there is devotion in every breath he draws from the air here. She has been on three tours of the tenants’ lands since her arrival, and their loyalty to him as their landlord is something she is unfamiliar with. She is so used to terror and threats, blackmail and money as means of retaining loyalty. Nikita is an astonishingly brilliant woman, but has never bothered with touching the emotional side of human nature. She has always seen it as weakness; Sascha now sees it as a strength to hone. 

“She makes no mention of coming up here,” she says as he sits on the settee near the window, after drawing the drapes. Her cheeks flush with the implication. 

“We shall see her within the fortnight. Sooner still if you do not reply,” he says, gaze intent on her. 

Wetting her lips, she rises from her desk and makes her way over to him, smoothing the skirts of her green muslin day dress. The house remains cool even in the humid sticky heat of July. 

“I hardly know what to say,” she says as she sits next to him. His arm immediately comes around her waist and drags her close to his side, until she is all but sitting in his lap. “Except that I would prefer her not to come.”

“Which will seem suspicious,” he murmurs, mouth lowering to her bare throat. She shivers as he kisses her skin, his tongue wetting her skin. 

“You are distracting me.”

“I can’t help it. I can’t be near you and not touch,” he says with a wicked grin, lifting his mouth to hers. 

This has been decidedly apt. Apart from their shared bedchamber, they have debauched the library, his office, and the southwest parlor since their arrival, as well as a shady copse of trees down by the river. It has been an incredibly enlightening and pleasurable experience – and, thanks to the ever-helpful Mrs. Ryder, Sascha has procured a contraceptive mixture of herbs that she drinks every morning, to try and ensure a lack of child. 

Someday, yes, she wants one. But now, apart from delaying her mother and Santano’s sordid plans, she just wants to have Lucas to herself. 

His hand slides under her skirts, tiptoeing over her stockings and the garters at her thighs. She feels herself go boneless under his touch, the press of his mouth. 

“How do you do this to me?” she whispers against his lips, sliding her hands through his thick dark hair. “Lucas – “

He shifts onto his back on the sofa, one strong lean hand cupped between her thighs, touching her wet flesh through the slit in her drawers. Shivering, she leans over him, her hands moving over his chest, his shoulder, dipping under the neckline of his shirt to touch hot bare skin. Their mouths catch and soften against each other, and soon he has her moaning into his mouth, his hands driving her to a pleasurable frenzy. He has her slide onto him right there on the sofa, their clothes still on and askew, tonguing his way over the exposed curve of her throat and breasts. She twines her fingers into his shirt and clenches around him, pleasure rising in a high crest. 

After, they sit tucked together in a corner of the sofa, breathless and flushed. She strokes her hands over his chest and shoulders, petting him in a way he arches into and relaxes through. There is so much responsibility on his shoulders. She wishes she could do more to ease it. 

“I like having you here,” he says into her ear, stroking her hair away from her throat. His tenderness with her wriggles deep into her aching heart. “You make this place feel like home.”

She tips her head back, watching him. “I love it here,” she says softly, thinking of the portrait gallery, of the watchful eyes of his parents in oils. They have been dead for years now, over a decade; Lucas has yet to mention the gossiped-over circumstances to her, or where he received the scars that mark his face. She would ask, but she doesn’t know that she feels safe enough in his affections to risk it. 

He knows so much of her, though. She has no shield with him, she cannot. 

“It feels like home to you, then?” he asks, voice low and deep. 

Touching his jaw lightly, she leans up to kiss him. “You are home to me,” she says, stripped bare. 

His eyes darken, something primal rising in the deep green gaze. Abruptly he takes her hands in his and brings her knuckles to his mouth, kissing them fiercely. 

“Sascha, I – “

He pauses. She wets her lips and shifts on his lap, curling her fingers against his. A flush is hot on her cheeks. She feels exposed and unsettled, a piece of her heart laid bare to him once more. 

Finally he kisses her hands and releases her, wrapping his arms around her waist and nestling her close to his chest. “I almost wish we didn’t have company coming this evening,” he murmurs. “I want to be alone with you for a long, long time.”

 _I love you_. The words are there, lingering on her tongue. It has been months in the making, but Sascha is sure – she is sure of her feelings. And she would give them – but even with Lucas, she is cautious. She has lived too long in the shadow of her mother to be free with such gifts. 

Sighing, she angles her face to kiss his jaw, right where his scars lay. “Unfortunately, there are guests coming. I must check in with Mrs. Ryder,” she murmurs before flowing off of his lap and straightening her gown. 

“Are you sure I can’t distract you from your duties?” he asks with a slow grin, glancing her up and down from his seat on the settee. 

She wrinkles her nose at him, secretly delighted. “You’re incorrigible.”

“I do love when you use your vocabulary to woo me, kitten,” he murmurs. 

She leaves him in her study with a smile, the words safe in the vault of her heart. She cannot be so easy with the emotions and affections she carries. She cannot bear the rejection – not from him. 

*

“You are not what I expected.”

Sascha glances to her right at the long dinner table, meeting Hawke Snow’s pale blue gaze. Resplendent in his black evening wear, he watches her with eyes like a predator, his silver-blond hair a sharp contrast to his jacket. She is familiar with Lord Snow, having been out in Society for three seasons now, but she has never sat quite so near. He is a magnetic man, taciturn at times. But when his gaze sets on Sienna Lauren, halfway down and across the table from him, his eyes soften. Sascha knows when she looks at one in love. 

She feels it herself too keenly, nowadays.

In the candle-lit dining room, Lucas sits at the head of the table, with people on either side creating distance. But their eyes meet every so often, and she bites the inside of her lip to try and control the flush on her cheeks. 

“You are quite what I expected, Lord Snow, on the contrary,” she says lightly, sipping her claret. 

Snow’s piercing gaze flickers over her face. “I mean to say you have less of the calculation of your mother.”

“Perhaps I exercise it in a different fashion, my lord,” she says, setting her wine down. “Doesn’t Miss Lauren look lovely this evening? The gold cream is such a good hue for her.”

He blinks, his gaze automatically flickering to pretty, young, steel-willed Sienna Lauren. A year younger than Sascha, she is the niece of Viscount Walker Lauren and his ward, her mother dying when Sienna was just out of the nursery. The age difference between Snow and Sienna is ten years, nothing in terms of Society’s standards; but Sascha has seen enough of them in public to sense the deeper longings. 

“It is,” he says, voice oddly caught in his throat.

Sascha smiles a little to herself, a smile that does not go unnoticed. 

“Won’t you let us in on the joke, Your Grace?” 

She smiles at Dorian, Lord Christianson, glad to see a spark of enjoyment in his eyes. The sudden and violent loss of his younger sister in March hurt him deeply, or so Lucas has said in his veiled way, and Sascha is glad to see her husband’s close friend smiling again. “There is no joke, sir. I’m only reveling in the pleasure of the gathering,” she says lightly. 

“Quite the gathering,” Sir Riley Kincaid says from near Lucas’s end of the table, his wife Mercy smirking at him from the opposite side. 

“It’s nice to see people in this house again,” Lord Bennett says from the middle of the table. “Not meant for quiet, a house like this.”

 _Lucas is not meant for solitude, for quiet_ , she thinks, glancing at her husband. There are secrets he carries, secrets in this house. Death haunts where it should not. She does not know quite how to correct it, though it is a longing deep in her breast to do so. She wants to bring only joy here. Her mother’s letter haunts her in these moments, as she laughs and chats and drinks port with her husband’s friends now hers. She pretends not to notice when Sienna and Hawke disappear into the well-lit southern gardens, though her uncle’s brow pinches together so much that his laughing wife Lara must smooth it, and she pretends there is nothing on her mind but matchmaking and honeymooning as the guests depart for their own homes. 

Lucas keeps Hawke, Riley, and Dorian behind for a nightcap in his library. Sascha, too restless to sleep, treads carefully up the stairs to the third floor portrait gallery. Ormondes by the dozens and their spouses hang here, from the fifteenth century and onwards. A candle in her hand, she stops in front of Lucas’s father and mother – Charles and Shayla – and looks upon them in silence. Their ghosts perhaps do not linger, but their demise does. 

“You wander very late tonight.”

Sascha glances behind her to see Lucas, a candle in his hand, just feet away. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“All the excitement?” he asks lightly, the smile of a duke on his lips. It is socialized and prepared. She has seen wilder, more natural looks on his beautiful face. “You grow more comfortable with my friends with every gathering.”

“I like them very much.” She has a tea appointment with Lara Lauren and Sienna next week, and Mercy Kincaid is to come for a walk about the ground within the next few days. “I have never had friends in such a fashion.”

“Your mother was that particular?”

She shrugs, an unladylike gesture. But he likes when her primness falls away. “A merchant’s daughter, even a rich one, isn’t the greatest of friends to boast. Especially when your mother is the one making the business deals. My friends were the books I hid under my bed, and Faith.”

He comes to stand next to her, staring up at his mother’s portrait. She smiles in the oils, hair dark and lustrous, eyes dark. Lucas’s eyes come from his father, though – a striking gaze even in portraiture. She and Lucas will hang here one day, in the spaces next to his parents. She is a part of this legacy. 

“I was homeschooled here until the age of eight, and then sent away as all men of my station are. Eton, when I was a teenager,” he says slowly, as if the memory is just returning. “I came home for every holiday. My parents visited before – “

He stops, his grip on the candle holder white-knuckled. Sascha wets her lips and glances away, keeping her patience. 

“I imagine you heard of their deaths,” he says after a moment, voice controlled. 

“Society passed along what it thought it knew,” she says quietly. 

“It did,” he says curtly. 

She does not press. Smoothing her hands over the fall of her violet evening gown, she cups his elbow and rubs her thumb over the taut muscle of his forearm, the tension evident through his dinner jacket. “Come to bed, love,” she says softly, all the gentleness in the world for him. 

He turns to her, his eyes emerald-bright, and nods shortly. His jaw is tense, the lines of his face as jagged as his scars. Leaning down, he kisses her once, twice, his mouth hot and demanding, before he takes her hand and leads her back to their shared bedchamber. It is only later, after they have exhausted each other with lips and hands and teeth and tongue, that he speaks again, voice hard and strained. 

“When I was thirteen, I was on my way home from Eton for Christmas. My mother came to get me. My father was a leader of troops against the French and in other small skirmishes before he settled down with my mother, and he was well-known. His enemies sent Hessian mercenaries to kidnap me and my mother, to extort my father,” he says into the deep thick summer darkness, the heat so much that they lay naked together on top of the sheets, the windows thrown open. 

Sascha, curled up to his side, stretches her hand over his bare chest, right above his heart. Her hair he slips his fingers through and braids down her back as he speaks, as if the motion keeps his tongue moving. 

“My father, as a surprise, was coming to meet us in Northampton so that we could all journey together. When the mercenaries surprised us, he was in the carriage with us. They took all three of us through the woods to some tiny hut. They asked my father for money. He refused, and they began – “

He stops, his skin thrumming under her. He is hot and sweaty. She sits up to perch next to him, touching his jaw, running her fingers through his hair. 

“You don’t have to tell me,” she says softly, her heart aching for him. 

“I want to,” he rasps, eyes terribly dark. His hand goes around her waist and brings her back down into the circle of his arms. 

“They hurt my mother. When my father tried to stop it, they hurt me. The scars – all the scars are from those days. They kept us three days and nights. My father offered them everything they asked, and they still hurt us – my mother died in front of us,” he says bleakly. “My father flew at them, to offer me a chance to get away. I took it. And they killed him.”

Tears burn at the back of her eyes. She rubs her cheek against his shoulder, wrapping her arms around him tightly. 

“There were constables searching the woods, looking for us. Another hour, and – “ Lucas stops, voice thick. He clears his throat. “I left my father to die.”

“No,” she says softly, tears clogging her throat. “He wanted to save you. He gave you a chance. How could you have known? Lucas – “

He buries his face in her throat, clasping her tightly. In the solid darkness she holds him close and kisses his jaw, his neck, his temple – whatever she can reach. Her bones ache with this ancient pain. There is no romance like in the sordid gossip Society passed along. This is tragedy. 

“They both wanted you to live. I think they must have loved you very much,” she whispers. 

She holds him until the trembles cease, until he is breathing evenly under her. His arms remained locked around her, as if she is a bastion, safe shelter. She doesn’t mind being held so closely. 

“I found out who hired the Hessians,” he says after a long spell of silence. “Five years ago, I killed him.”

Sascha swallows, suppressing the chill. “I understand,” she says unsteadily. 

He pulls back, his eyes bright and hard in the dim nighttime light. “Do you?”

She thinks of what it would do to her to lose him, to lose a child of theirs to the machinations of others. Something deadly and fierce grips within her chest, turning her blood cool. “Yes,” she says evenly. 

He touches her cheek, traces the line of her jaw. His gaze is unbearably soft. “Those are my secrets, kitten. I’m all in your hands, now.”

Wetting her lips, she leans down to kiss him. “Will you tell me about them?” she asks softly. “Your parents, when you were here. They were happy?”

Taking a deep breath, he does. He tells her of a contented childhood, of his parents’ love. She slips into sleep with him as he speaks, their arms wrapped around each other. 

Still, she cannot give him the secret of her heart. 

*

Sascha walks the grounds every day in the late morning, once her meetings with Mrs. Ryder and the other household staff are through. She wants to know Darkriver as well as Lucas does, love it as much as he does. In order to be the most efficient, she brings a pencil and a sketchpad, shipped up especially from London, to record and parse out her thoughts and observations. 

In early August, four weeks into their stay at Darkriver, she sits at the base of a tree and looks out upon the riverbed, watching the play of light and shade in the water and the green leaves enveloping her. She was never one for drawing, the one ladylike skill she didn’t master; however, today she feels possessed to take out her pencil and do more than just scribble notes on this hill or that stream. This is her last day of uninterrupted free time to explore; beginning tomorrow, they are hosting a summer party for their friends and family to mark the end of the Season. Her mother will be attending, though Sascha, in a fit of strength, did not extend an invitation to Santano. 

Perhaps – perhaps now that she is married and secure, her mother could pull away from him as a partner. Perhaps there could be something new in this chapter of her life for everyone she cares for. 

The missives between Duncan House and Darkriver have been cool since Sascha’s disappearance from London. She tries not to read too much into the odd silence, tries to put it from her mind. But she’s certain her mother has a plan. Nikita always does. 

“Aren’t you a picture?”

Lucas’s warm voice fills the tree-lined copse. She tips her head up and smiles, her pulse fluttering under her skin. He is utterly relaxed here with her, waistcoat abandoned for just a simple linen shirt and breeches. 

“I’m merely enjoying the day,” she says, watching as he takes a seat next to her. His hip nudges hers, his shoulder pressed to hers. 

“I love that you like it here,” he says warmly, eyes bright and expressive. 

Since the evening he shared the painful story of his parents’ deaths, she feels as if they have arrived at a true partnership, even more than a marriage. He comes to her for advice concerning his business prospects, his friends’ relationships; she in turn shares the quiet and stilted stories of her childhood, a lonely time with just books and Faith for company under Nikita’s watchful keen eye. They seem to understand each other, and she knows – she knows she loves him. The words are on her tongue every time he kisses her, or when he brings her a pot of tea, or she finds a posy of summer blooms at her desk in her study. The physical attraction is there, a fierce sensation of want and need that she thinks will never fade; but it is more than that. He trusts her, and she trusts him; she has never felt so secure in any one’s affections in this way before. 

Still, she doesn’t know how to say so. Or whether he feels the same. 

“I love it here,” she says instead, tapping the edge of her lead against the rough paper under her fingertips. “If we never go back to London, I would be quite content.”

Laughing, he takes one of her hands in his. Every day is full of these casual touches and intimacies. He likes to stroke her hair, to touch the line of her neck, to keep her hand in his as they sit or walk together. Does that mean he loves her? She has no idea. Though he professes to be an open book to her, she still has no idea of his emotions beyond friendly affection and trust. She is content with that. 

“I believe Hawke is finally going to ask for Sienna’s hand,” he says at last. 

“I hope she lets him suffer for an answer for at least ten minutes,” she says wryly. 

“You are hard, kitten,” he says, all amusement. 

She leans her cheek against his shoulder, the warmth of his skin bleeding through the linen. “He’s led her a chase. I’ve watched them together these past two Seasons.”

“I imagine he was waiting for her to grow up and make up her mind,” he murmurs. 

“She’s had her mind made up for a good year now. She loves him very much,” she says, a catch in her throat. 

His fingers squeeze around hers. “Do you think so?”

“I do,” she says softly. It’s raw and discomforting at times, to see how Hawke and Sienna have circled about each other and looked at one another across dinner tables and crowded ballrooms. But it is solid and true. 

Making a small low sound of agreement, Lucas turns his head, his lips touching her temple. “Then I am glad to make the announcement at dinner tomorrow night.”

Smiling, she raises her face to his, meeting his bright green gaze. “As am I.”

He raises his hand to her cheek, cupping his palm to the rise of skin and bone there. His gaze is intent, steady. She feels herself flush under the attention. 

“I think I would like to take you to the Continent,” he says quietly, his fingertips skimming the line of her jaw and throat. “Is there anywhere in particular you’ve wanted to go?”

She blinks, unable to breathe for a moment. From the moment she met him, her life has opened up in the best possible ways. She will never be able to tell him how grateful she is for his affection and the freedom granted to her. 

She thinks, _Paris_. When she opens her mouth, however, what falls out is, “I love you.”

Stilling, he watches her, his eyes very wide. She blushes and ducks away, shifting from his side and scrambling to her feet. 

“Sascha, wait – “

She tucks her pad of pad under her arm and picks up the loose skirts of her rose muslin day dress, hurrying through the trees back towards the looming manor. Her heart pounds in her chest and she feels as if she will be as red as a tomato for the rest of her life. Behind her, his footsteps sound, the length of his stride catching hers easily. 

“Sascha – “ His hand catches at her elbow as she steps onto the gravel-lined drive. Her eyes catch a familiar black coach, and two figures on the steps with Mrs. Ryder. 

Sascha stops dead, Lucas running into her from behind. “She’s early,” she says dumbly. 

For there is Nikita Duncan, in her black traveling cape, leveling a stare at her daughter from across the drive. 

“And she isn’t alone,” Lucas says in her ear, voice dropping low and cool. 

Santano’s dark gaze fixes on Sascha. She shudders and takes a deep breath, collecting herself. She lived in the same house as both of them for nearly twenty-two years. She knows how to shield herself well. 

“Sascha – “

“I suppose we must give welcome,” she says evenly. 

Lucas’s fingers tighten on her elbow for just a moment before he drops away and walks up to her side. “Indeed.”

*

“You look well-enough,” Nikita says as they sit in the eastern-facing parlor. 

Sascha doesn’t blink or pause as she serves the tea to her mother and Santano. Lucas had wanted to stay, but Dorian arrived with a tenant emergency, and so Sascha shooed him away. Now she is alone with Nikita and Santano, and she feels as if she is a child again, searching for some kind of sign of affection or approval. 

“The country air agrees with me,” Sascha says after a moment, tone cool. 

“With your rapid departure from town, we assumed you were unwell,” Santano drawls, slouching. He has a habit of slouching, of trying to make himself seem harmless in polite company. Sascha has seen him straight-backed and in business deals her whole life; she knows better. 

“I am perfectly well.”

“And you are a full wife to His Grace?”

Sascha freezes at the blunt question from Santano. She does not look at her mother. Instead, she sips her tea, keeping her gaze on his. “The law of probabilities would suggest so.”

His motion is so quick, she has no time to prepare. He is next to her on her settee in a moment, grasping her upper arms so tightly that she drops her teacup. The warm liquid sloshes over her gown as the cup clatters to the rug below. 

“Do not try to play games you do not understand, you silly bitch,” Santano hisses in her face, dark gaze direct and sharp. 

Sascha tries to rise, but his fingers sink into the soft skin of her arm, tight enough to bruise. “Get your damn hands off of me,” she counters, refusing still to look at her mother. 

“If she bruises, Ormonde will ask of it,” Nikita says coolly. 

Santano drops his hands but remains next to her on the settee. “Are you pregnant?”

“No,” Sascha says, her fury a cold hard knot in her chest. “And I do not care to be so.”

He grips her jaw in a strong hand, his thumb at her chin. “What have you told him?”

“There is nothing to tell,” she retorts. 

“You will stop whatever methods you’ve contrived to avoid conception and get the hell on with it,” he says sharply, his voice edged with anger. 

“You are not my father or my guardian, and I do not take orders from anyone,” she says icily before she pushes away his hand and rises from her seat. “And you were not issued an invitation for this visit.”

“He comes as my guest,” Nikita says, a hint of warning in her cool voice. 

“I didn’t offer you a guest, Mother,” Sascha says tightly, turning to Nikita at last. “Whatever plans you are concocting, _stop_.”

“We’re going to kill him,” Santano says from behind her. 

For a moment, the world falls away. Sascha stands as still as stone in the middle of her parlor, her mind a blank. The smell of tea leaves lingers in her nose. Her skirt is damp under her fingertips, her skin crawling at the reminders of Santano’s touch. 

_We’re going to kill him._

_I am married to the Duke of Ormonde. They planned for us to marry. They planned for me to conceive. Once there is an heir, they will kill him. And then -_

“He has made enemies abroad, who will pay dearly to see him departed from this world. This way, we will have the title and the access so desired for so long,” Santano continues, voice like oil. “And if we do not deliver, your mother’s life is forfeit.”

Sascha’s gaze flickers to Nikita, who does not flinch or move a muscle. There is a lie somewhere here. Her mother is a businesswoman, not a murderer. What does Santano have on her?

“We have no room prepared for you, sir,” she says at last, her voice oddly distant and cold in her own ears. “I suggest you depart.”

“To turn out your mother’s business partner is a serious statement. Do not be an impetuous child,” Santano threatens, his body directly at her back. His breath is hot against her neck. There is a hand at her waist. Suddenly it is clear. 

He has wanted her. He thinks he can have her. 

Overwhelmed with nausea, Sascha does not look at either of them. “Be gone in a half-hour, sir.”

She strides out of the parlor and slams the door shut behind her. Her hands tremble as she moves with steady even steps through the house, taking care to lock both Lucas’s study and her own. She walks to the kitchen to check on preparation for dinner; she notified Mrs. Ryder of her mother’s early arrival, and to ensure her room is prepared. Sascha walks the lengths of the house until she hears the carriage pull up, until she pauses at a window overlooking the drive and sees Santano leap into a carriage and depart down the gravel road. Her heart pounds painfully, but her mind is artfully clear. It all makes sense, now. 

Nikita still lingers in the east parlor, a stark figure among the cool blues and creams of the décor. Sascha steps inside and shuts the door behind her. 

“What does he have on you?” she asks her mother, a bold question she would not have dreamed of asking even two months ago. But that was before. Now, Lucas - her family is at risk. 

Nikita glances at her, her pale face smooth as ice. “Nothing.”

“You’re a cruel businesswoman, Mother. You aren’t a murderer. What does he have on you?”

Nikita blinks. “You are not your father’s daughter.”

Sascha wets her lips, exhaling. She has no memory of her father; the information means little. “Is he – “

“No. Santano Enrique is not your father. I would never stoop so low.”

“Your standards for intimate contact perhaps should correspond with your standards for business conduct,” Sascha retorts. 

A frisson of something – pride perhaps? – flickers across Nikita’s face. It is gone as quickly as it comes. “Santano is perfectly willing to ruin my business and your marriage with the knowledge that you are a bastard child. The outcome in either case ties your hands and mine.”

“Lucas won’t care where I come from,” Sascha bites out – though she cannot be certain. 

“Of course he will,” Nikita says, sounding more tired than Sascha has ever heard her. “My god, Sascha. You know what society is. You know how low you are already esteemed by those in his circle.”

“They like me,” Sascha says evenly, not letting the wound bleed into her tone. Her mother knows how to cut deeply. 

“He will have to annul the marriage on grounds of fraud. You will never marry again. My investors will pull out. We will be ruined, Sascha.”

“I am _not_ participating in this,” Sascha says, voice brutally low. She stares at her mother, hands clenched at her sides. “How you could – how you could even imagine – “

“I didn’t think you would fall in love with him,” Nikita says coolly. “I thought I taught you better than that.”

From a distance, Sascha can hear horse hooves on the gravel drive. Lucas, home at last. Fear quakes through her, turning her limbs to jelly. She blinks and shakes her head. “That has nothing to do with it at all,” she says, tone flat. “This is murder. And I will not participate.”

“Then you will lose him. As you would, either way.”

Sascha leaves Nikita alone in the parlor once again, the nausea roiling in her stomach. She meets Lucas in the entrance hall, hiding the trembling of her fingertips in her skirts. “Is everything all right?” she asks, thinking of the tenants in need. 

He takes one look at her, eyeing her up and down, and immediately wraps an arm around her waist and leads her upstairs. 

“What happened?” he asks, voice low, as he shuffles her into their bedchamber and shuts the door behind them. It’s utterly improper for the middle of the day, and she doesn’t care a whit. 

Wetting her lips, she straightens her spine and lifts her chin. For a brief second, she considers lying to him. But it fades; she could never do it, never break their bond of trust in such a way. It would have been nice to know if he loved her; he certainly will not say so after this conversation. “Apparently, our marriage has been a ploy to murder you and steal your holdings, once I bear you an heir.”

To his credit, Lucas doesn’t flinch. His gaze settles on her, green eyes as hard as flints. “Is that so?”

“If my mother and I do not cooperate, Santano is going to ruin her business and our marriage,” she says, the evenness of her tone breaking under the hard suspicion of his gaze. He will not believe her innocence in this; she can see it. 

“And how is he going to do that?” he asks, standing quite still. 

“It appears that he has evidence that I am a bastard,” she says, choking on the words as her voice falters. “And Nikita verified its veracity. So – my mother will be branded a whore, and I will be stricken from the Duncan inheritance. I think I have a second cousin somewhere who will profit. Lucky for him.”

Promptly, for the first time in years, she begins to cry. Hot suffocating tears that spill down her cheeks, steal the breath right from her. She sits down on the edge of the bed and put her face in her hands, wishing herself anywhere but here under Lucas’s collected gaze. She wants to go back to the Devonshire ball all those months ago and avoid his gaze, to run from his smile. She wants to put her heart back in its safe cage and not know what she knows now. 

It takes her a moment to realize that he is at her side, gathering her into his arms and pulling her into his lap as he sits on the bed. She presses her face to his throat and inhales wetly, wiping tears from her cheeks and the corners of her eyes. His hand strokes over her back, the press of his mouth gentle at the top of her hair. In the cradle of his arms, she settles, trying to remember this warmth for later, when he is no longer hers. 

“Santano said he planned it with someone abroad,” she says after a long moment, her voice croaked and strained. “He didn’t give a name.”

“There’s a Frenchman who has a score to settle with me from years past,” Lucas says quietly, his voice low and warm. “LeBon. Hawke and I wrecked a plot of his concerning English shipping. I imagine that’s who it might be.”

“What on earth were you doing in France?” she marvels, leaning back to look at him. 

He smiles slightly, mouth crooked. She loves his crooked smile, loves the stretch of his scars at his jaw, loves the fierce beauty of him. “Revenge for my parents.”

She touches his jaw, smoothing her fingertips over the lines there. “Santano is a terrible man. But I didn’t expect this,” she says softly. “Perhaps I should have.”

“No,” he says, tucking her closer. “No. Your mother, probably. You, never.”

“I am a fool,” she says bitterly, thinking of her mother’s words. _I had to fall in love with him._

Lucas kisses her then, all but licks the salt from her cheeks like an animal. She melts into the caress, her hands gripping the collar of his shirt. “We will fix this,” he says, keeping her gaze. 

“How? He must have a plan in case of something like this, of being discovered. The papers in London may already have the news,” she says, bewildered. 

He kisses her again, mouth hot and insistent and open against hers. “We will fix this,” he breathes, holding her close. 

In the aftermath, Sascha can’t imagine how. But she lets him kiss her, and doesn’t think on it for a moment or two. 

*

Santano returns for dinner, at Sascha’s invitation. A room is made ready for him in the manor. 

Lucas is an actor beyond belief. He is polite and affable to a man who plans his death. They take brandy and cigars as Nikita and Sascha sip tea in the formal parlor, after the meal. 

“Did you tell him?” Nikita asks when they are alone.

“No, Mother,” Sascha lies, and it is the first time she has lied successfully to her mother in twenty years. 

Later, Sascha lays alone in bed in just her shift, staring up at the drawn green velvet drapes. She wonders if Lucas will come to her tonight. In all the planning of dinner and preparing of rooms, and in attempting to not think upon the wealth of information given to her today, she forgets that they did not speak of her illegitimacy. Now, alone in the room they have shared without fail since arriving, she thinks it will all come back to haunt her. 

Just as she decides not to wait up, Lucas enters through the connecting door to the duke’s bedchamber. He is dark-eyed and tense around the lines of his mouth, but he smiles at her and shrugs off his dressing gown, blowing out the candles as he makes his way to bed. He is nude, and she takes a moment to watch the muscles and limbs of his toned body move in the candlelight. 

“I didn’t know if you would come,” she confesses as he slides into bed. 

He blinks at her, slipping an arm around her waist as he tucks himself to the curves of her body. “Why not?”

“Well – apparently I am a bastard – “

Leaning over her, he moves like a big cat in the shadows, his eyes fixed on her in the dim summer evening light. His body settles over hers and she parts her thighs for him, slides her hands over his chest and back. His hand settles in her loose hair. He likes it when she wears it down to bed. 

“I don’t care who your father is. Frankly, I could care less about your mother, though I will thank her for providing an opportunity for us to meet,” he says, voice low and fierce. “I would have married you if you were a serving girl, or a maid, or a farmer’s daughter. I love you, Sascha. I have loved you a long while.”

Embarrassingly, tears spring to her eyes for the second time that day. She rests her palm over his heart, as if she can feel the truth of his words through his skin. “Since when?”

He smiles down at her. “Since you told me I was an ingrate for not paying Mary Wollstonecraft proper attention.”

That was back in April. Her heart leaps into her throat. “I – Lucas – “

Leaning down, he kisses her soft and slow. He braces himself over her on one elbow as his other hand travels the curves of her body, strokes and teases and palms the curves of her breasts through her shift, slides under the cotton to stroke between her legs. She quivers beneath him and arches into his touch, crying out as he strokes inside of her. His mouth wets her shift as he licks and kisses her breasts, bites at her nipple. She is lost in the sensation of his skin against hers, of his breath on her skin, of his touch everywhere. When he pulls at the ribbons at the neck of her shift, she shimmies out of the fabric and tosses it aside, touching him across his broad chest and back, testing the resilience of his buttocks and thighs with her nails. 

“I love you,” she whispers against his throat as she takes his erection in hand, stroking him as she knows he likes. A guttural moan peels out of his throat and he rocks against her hips, all that bare hot skin like a kiss against her own. 

When he thrusts into her at last, she hooks her thighs around his hips and pulls him closer. He takes her mouth with a deep kiss as they move together, his hands linking with hers as he stretches their arms up over their heads. She twines her fingers into his and exhales, letting the warmth and pleasure of their joining crest within her until she trembles at his every touch, the brush of his lips against the length of her throat. 

He bites her throat, soothing the mark with a wet kiss, and she turns to glittering pieces under him, gasping his name and for air as her pleasure takes her. He loses himself in her soon after, burying his face in her throat and hair, holding her with a hard possessiveness she would not exchange for the world. 

She is his, but now she knows that he is hers, as well. 

“I still fail to see how this ends well,” she says in the warm quiet darkness later, all but laying on top of him as his fingers drift through her hair and over her back. 

He kisses her cheek. “I will keep you safe, love. Never doubt it.”

“This isn’t me doubting you. It’s merely a question of logic. Certainly we won’t be murdering you. But you cannot remain married to me if I am a penniless bastard, no matter how furious your love for me,” she says practically. 

“I do love when you speak like some sort of governess. It’s oddly titillating,” he murmurs, his finger stroking over her bottom and between her thighs. 

Squeaking slightly, she rubs her knuckles over his heart. “Lucas, please.”

He sighs and places his hand on her thigh. “Do you know Kaleb Krychek?”

She blinks. “The Duke of Grafton?” From what she recalled, he is a cold, severe man around Lucas’s age who married two Seasons ago to Sahara Kyriakus, the only child of a Spanish lord and his late English wife who was a second daughter of the Marquess of Pembroke. Kaleb and Sahara live in the country and rarely came to town. Krychek’s background is something of an oddity; his father and mother died very young, and he was someone’s ward until his majority. She remembers Santano mentioning the Duke owing him a favor once or twice, but she found that awfully strange. He and Sahara seem happy together, the few times she’s seen them in society. They have a daughter now just turned one. 

“We’re friendly. He is quite familiar with both Santano and LeBon and their dealings. I’ve sent him a missive. When I hear from him, we will know how to move forward,” Lucas says, stroking her thigh lightly. 

Shivering, she props her chin on his chest to look at him. “Don’t put yourself in harm’s way,” she says softly. 

He smiles faintly, stroking the dark waves of her hair from her face. “And leave you alone in this great house with just your mother for company? I promised you a full life, Sascha darling. I will do whatever it takes for you to live it.”

Kissing him softly, she tucks herself closer into the warmth of his hold. “I want to live it with _you_ ,” she whispers. 

His hold on her tightens. “Then that is what we will do.”

*

Kaleb Krychek, Duke of Grafton, is a very good man to be friendly with. 

Within a week, Santano Enrique is imprisoned in the Tower of London upon suspicion of extortion and murder. Apparently, Krychek reveals, Santano was behind the deaths of Krychek’s parents, and orchestrated his wardship by utilizing the Marquess of Northampton, who was heavily in debt to Santano. Though Kaleb did not go into specifics, it seems his wardship was hellish, much because of Santano’s influence. Only once Kaleb achieved his majority and had independent wealth – thanks to his wife, Sahara – was he able to pay off Santano and collect the evidence needed to strike. It was an arduous process, made easier by assistance from Lucas, Hawke, and their friends. 

Santano dies in prison after two weeks. Sascha would feel bad, but she cannot bring herself to do so. 

Vaughn goes through Santano’s papers, and destroys the incriminating evidence of Sascha’s illegitimacy. It is deceptive, but Lucas shows no regret. 

“I promised you would be safe,” he tells her in the evening, after Vaughn returns from London (and makes a beeline for Faith once released from his duties for the evening, Sascha notes). “I would do whatever it takes to keep you so.”

Sascha kisses him, and thinks no more of it. 

*

“You think me devoid of morals,” Nikita states flatly as she and Sascha walk down the front steps of the manor. Her carriage awaits; she returns to London to untangle her investments from Santano’s, to continue to build her business interests. Sascha isn’t worried, for once; her mother always knows how to survive. 

“I don’t believe anything is black or white, Mother,” Sascha says quietly. “And I am very happy. I am thankful for these schemes, as they have brought me here.”

Nikita looks her up and down, her black hair pulled back severely as it gleams in the September sunlight. She stayed an extra week past the end of the summer party, presumably to visit with Sascha; truly, she waited here for the gossip surrounding Santano’s arrest and death to die down. Sascha may never fully understand her mother, but she cannot fault her for everything.

“Perhaps I did not give you enough credit,” Nikita says at last, before the footman hands her into the carriage. 

Sascha gives one singular wave as the carriage departs. She stands in the cooling fall afternoon and wraps her arms around herself, the muslin of her dress thin and light. She can feel every breeze against her skin as if she is bare to it. The dust settles as the carriage disappears down the lane, and still Sascha stands, outside the house that she lives in with a husband she would not have dared to love, had it not been for the mother she barely knows and plans that could have turned dastardly. 

The hair on the nape of her neck rises, though she hears no footsteps. She turns and smiles as Lucas approaches, as light on his feet as a predator stalking his prey. 

“All right, then?” he asks, eyes bright as emeralds. She thinks of the necklace she wore the night of their first meeting, of his gaze on her throat. 

“Well enough,” she says, reaching out to him with a hand. 

He slips his fingers into hers and leads her up the steps to the front doors. “I love you, Sascha,” he says quietly, his voice a fierce, low sound in her ear. 

She leans up to kiss him, her lips lingering at the scars she loves so much on his jaw. “Take me upstairs and show me how much,” she whispers, her love for him a wild thing in her blood. 

A smirk curls his mouth. She gasps and shrieks as he lifts her up in his arms and takes her inside. The doors shut firmly behind them, and they are safe and alone at last. 

*


End file.
